8 Want to play the “Guess Who?” game again. This chapter’s mystery guest sought the Republican nomination for president and told Americans he had been a combat Marine in Korea and been awarded three battle stars there. But those who knew him then, including Republican Congressman Paul McCloskey, Jr., said “X” had done nothing of the kind. Instead “X” had always been stationed far out of harm’s way because his father, a U.S. Senator, pulled some strings. “X” instead was known as the “liquor procurement officer” in his outfit, and he never came within miles of a shot fired in anger. (“X” sued McCloskey for saying this, but then dropped the suit and agreed to pay McCloskey’s court costs.)
After returning from the Far East, “X” got a law degree from Yale but could not pass the bar exam—which must have thrilled his former profs no end. He converted to the Pentecostal movement at this crossroad in his life and moved into religious broadcasting. He proved to be a shrewd businessman, accumulating a large network of stations around the world and considerable wealth.
Beginning in 1985 “X” claimed God had moved hurricanes away from his neck of the Virginia woods in answer to his particular prayers. He also wrote that, if Americans didn’t watch out, the United Nations would disarm the country, and the rest of the world would take over the United States. Like many fundamentalists he welcomed the Gulf War, viewing it as one of the signs that the “End Days” were nigh and the Kingdom of God was at hand. But the “Rapture” did not occur. Then he said the events of 9/11 were God’s punishment of the United States for its immoral behavior—leaving unexplained why, if this was the point the Almighty wished to make, such a traumatic disaster did not occur during President Clinton’s presidency instead.
“X” has railed against hypocrisy on many occasions. Yet in 1994 when he was making emotional appeals on his television program for donations to fund Operation Blessing, which he said would transport refugees from Rwanda, it turned out the money was mainly used to transport diamond mining equipment for a company he owned in Zaire. Caught owning a race horse, when many evangelicals disapprove of gambling, he explained that he bought it simply because he liked to look at it. Like Oral Roberts, he preached faith healing to others, but got himself to a hospital quickly when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003.
Every few months “X” makes an outrageous statement that he later apologizes for, claims was misinterpreted, or doggedly sticks to with mind-bending elaborations and rationalizations. In August 2005 he opined that the CIA ought to assassinate Venezuela’s president. In January 2006 he suggested God had smote the prime minister of Israel with a stroke because his government had withdrawn its troops from the Gaza Strip. In May 2006 he said that God had told him that storms will hit America’s coastlines, including “possibly” a tsunami in the Pacific northwest. Later in May he announced that, thanks to the “age-defying protein shake” he hawks on his evangelistic TV show, he had leg pressed 2,000 pounds at age 73–about a thousand pounds more than the strongest football players can do in their prime. In January 2007 he told his enormous and faithful television audience that God had warned him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a mass killing late in 2007. “Something like a nuclear attack.” (If “X” is God’s prophet, why doesn’t the Almighty give him more specific information so we can see a real honest-to-God prediction confirmed? Why does God play “I know something you don’t know” through “X”?)
Because of X’s several scandals and many outrageous declarations, some observers think his influence among conservative Christians is waning. But the money keeps pouring in from his devoted followers. [As the scandal-plagued faith-healer Aimee Semple McPherson said decades ago, “If the papers tomorrow morning proved that I had committed eleven murders, (my followers) would still believe me.”]
Who is “X”? Oh heck, everybody knows that this, believe it or not, is
9 A telling example of how the piper must be paid when it comes to the Religious Right appeared on May 13, 2006 when Senator John McCain accepted an honorary degree and delivered the commencement address at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. During his 2000 campaign to become the Republican nominee for president, McCain had called Jerry Falwell an “agent of intolerance” and said Falwell and Pat Robertson had an “evil influence” in the Republican Party. But McCain is given no chance to become the Republican nominee in 2008 without the support of the Christian Right.
When asked about his appearance at Liberty University the next day on “Meet the Press,” Senator McCain said, “I believe that the ‘Christian Right’ has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason is because they’re so active and their followers are. And I believe they have a right to be a part of our party. I don’t have to agree with everything they stand for, nor do I have to agree with everything that’s on the liberal side of the Republican Party.”
10 On September 20, 2006 an independent Congressional-watch organization called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released its second annual “Most Corrupt Members of Congress Report.” Three senators and seventeen members of the House were named, most of them hold-overs from the first annual report (although the news release noted with some glee that two of the previous winners were already on their way to jail).
I found it instructive to look up the ratings these 20 lawmakers’ voting records received from the Family Research Council, the successor to the Christian Coalition as the major lobbying organization for the Religious Right. The average was 80%. Eight of the “most corrupt” had perfect 100% endorsements from the Family Research Council. The lowest score was a 64% posted by the Democratic Representative Alan Mollohan from West Virginia. (Seventeen of the twenty “most corrupt” were Republicans.)
To be sure, many other lawmakers who got high scores from the Family Research Council did not get named as most corrupt. But I think I read somewhere that there’s this interesting connection between being a lying, dishonest, amoral manipulator and becoming a leader of right-wing religious movements.
Chapter 7.
What’s To Be Done ? [1]
If you are a reasonably critical person, by now you’ve got to be wondering if you’re being buried by a big snow job. Almost without exception, the findings about authoritarians in the previous chapters have been negative. You wouldn’t want your daughter to marry one, would you? But maybe this presentation has been one-sided. Maybe is has been unfair. Maybe things have been biased.[2]
It
But the downside remains, and I want to emphasize that it’s really there. The presentation of the research in this book has
Having said this, I’d like to start this last chapter with some observations about any self-righteous s.o.b.’s
